Nintendo Terminates Swapnote Service On 3DS

In an alarming move, Nintendo have abruptly terminated online sharing in the Swapnote application for Nintendo 3DS, that allows 3DS users to exchange notes and drawings with one another over the Internet.

“Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known as Nintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material,” Nintendo’s announcement reads.

“Nintendo has been investigating ways of preventing this and determined it is best to stop the SpotPass feature of Swapnote because it allows direct exchange of photos and was actively misused.”

Nintendo elaborate: “We are very sorry for any inconvenience to the many consumers who have been using this service responsibly; however this decision was made considering the point that many minors also use this feature of Swapnote. Thank you for your understanding.”

Nintendo have not announced if they plan to provide an alternate method for 3DS users to exchange messages with one another. Perhaps the upcoming 3DS version of Miiverse—which has no release date—will provide such a feature, but it appears as though Nintendo aren’t comfortable allowing owners of their devices sharing risqué material with one another, even if it is between registered friends.

Parents should watch their own dang kids. If they were responsible with parental controls, we could still have a messaging feature on the 3DS, just like EVERY other current handheld and console.

Or, just remove the ability to attach pictures to SwapNote. (Though I would have missed the Colors 3D artwork and Animal Crossing screenshots from friends.)

Raltrios

Agreed. Now how am I supposed to get to know the 3DS friends I’ve made over the years better? We shared common interests and everything!
Unless you can contact your buddies through a forum or something, you’re now unlikely to ever hear from them again.
I’m very upset by this.

surakian

I think Nintendo is overreacting by terminating the entire Spotpass service on Swapnote. If children were exchanging FCs from online forums & websites, it should have been the parent’s responsibility to monitor their activity on the computer and on the 3DS. There are parental controls on the 3DS for a reason.

Nintendo should just replace it with Miiverse 3DS if they want to be able to monitor and filter materials.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

Parents dont use them.

So Nintendo will storm through their homes and teach them how to use it.

By having Kirby suck them all up and spit em out

lunier

I don’t think this is something your can blame parents though.

Did your parents watch every single move you make? If they didn’t, are you calling them bad parents?
If you are/plan on becoming a parent, will you be standing behind your kids 24/7? If not, will you consider yourself a bad parent?

Not to say that the parents are blameless though

surakian

At no point did I call anybody’s parenting bad. I am not even blaming the parents, but I am saying Nintendo is reacting too extreme for something that should be a responsibility of the parent to monitor.

Nintendo is not a parent, and they have presented the tools for parents to use to ensure the privacy and innocence of their children is not compromised through the use of the 3DS. There is a point where you need to teach your child internet safety in order to prevent this kind of stuff, and Nintendo shouldn’t have to deactivate an entire service because a child is unaware of the dangers of exchanging their FC with strangers online.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

Unfortunately that is the reality of the situation.

Nintendo’s legal team is antsy. Extremely antsy. So antsy in fact they jumped the gun with Smash Bros at Evo last year levels antsy

surakian

That wasn’t even last year. That was like a few months ago xD That was utterly ridiculous too. It’s like Nintendo likes shooting themselves in the foot and then patching it up with just a few small bandaids.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

They gotta keep them on a tighter leash lol.

They’re damn good at their jobs though. Holy hell they are good.

lunier

Oops, I meant to reply to the post below yours lol

Landesca

Nintendo has a right to not want this stuff affiliated with one of their services and I applaud them for making this choice, taking it down so they can hopefully figure out how to re-implement it to keep this from happening. At the same time, most parents aren’t very good at monitoring what their children do with electronics. I worked at Blockbuster, you’d be amazed at how many people rent Grand Theft Auto for their 8 year old.

surakian

I certainly don’t disagree with their decision to try and manage the situation, but keep in mind Nintendo created the FC system because they believed it would be the best method to protect children from strangers they would meet online. Clearly this didn’t work at all considering what has happened.

Nintendo should have known while they were making the 3DS and Swapnote (and Flipnote) that there was the potential for explicit material to be passed via SpotPass. This is something they probably should have planned ahead of time. They knew the landscape of the internet at the time. They had the tools.

For two years this kind of stuff has been sent plenty of times between 3DS users and complaints probably came in at a regular. They only became proactive in stopping it because parents probably were threatening to sue, they’ve just launched the 2DS that needs to make some good sales, and they can’t afford to lose money and positive press when the holiday season is coming up.

This is why I think they should just implement Miiverse 3DS and an account system. They can monitor and moderate posts, there is a flag/report system in place, and they can just suspend accounts when people disobey their ToS. And for Swapnote, add the same “flag/report” system. It should have probably been included from the get-go but…yeah.

Haha, I’m well aware. My cousins play almost everything I play and they aren’t even half my age.

It’s not about “right” or “wrong”. It’s just something people do, and yes, when hormones are racing through your body at a rate higher than they ever would in an adult body, you are more likely to do odd, sexually experimental things. It’s not right or wrong to do it, and it’s not right or wrong to not do it, but it’s something that happens.

Even though that’s a real shame, I can understand. Perhaps after they have a better understanding of the situation and better measures, it might return or something else will be put in its place.

栗場 江理久

Wow, I rarely used it lately at all, but still this shocks me greatly. I’m really disappointed :c

XypherCode

Isn’t this just temporary? I’ll miss Nikki. :(

Andrew A

Hopefully Nikki finds a new home. Like…Smash Bros.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

she’s on Miiveerssse

surakian

She needs to be in Smash Bros. as well!

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

YungSun Brown Eyes has taken her place on the Roster

XypherCode

But she’s not moving and dancing and writing…lol
And I don’t think that’s the official Nikki on Miiverse.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

The one I have is her lol

ShawnOtakuSomething

or 3DS menu Buddy

benhofb

OH MAN THAT WOULD BE SO SICK. It could be like the paperclip helper from the old Microsoft days.

Zero_Destiny

I see you’re trying to play a game. Do you need some help? Remember to push the A button to select. lol

ShawnOtakuSomething

but more useful and awesome

Distant_arcana

Idk but I just busted out laughing from that last comment about the paper clip.

PreyMantis

Well, what else were they expecting? I think what’s scary is that Nintendo is tapping on to people’s posts. I don’t know if there was an agreement whether they can check on people’s posts, so I can’t say for sure, but isn’t that invasion of privacy? With them being too paranoid about stupid kids posting “offensive material,” I worry whether they’ll do the same for the Miiverse.

surakian

They have moderators for Miiverse if you weren’t aware. The service is constantly monitored and posts are actively deleted if they are found to be lewd, offensive, or against their TOS.

PreyMantis

I know, but you can never be too sure about these sort of things.

surakian

Never too sure about…Nintendo monitoring Miiverse? Or their ability to tap into Swapnote?

When you turn on your 3DS the first time and set up an internet connection to set up SpotPass, you agree to their Service User Agreement and Privacy Policy that states they are allowed to collect “information related to the messages sent to Friends (including friend codes, nicknames, date, number of pages and technical information regarding attachments)”

The problem is that Miiverse is a public service. Swapnote is an entirely private messaging service, and to expect people to “keep it safe” defeats the purpose of it being a private service completely.

gold163

Swapnote is in no way a “private” service. You are using Nintendo’s service to exchange data, and like any other social network this comes with implications that are more often than not ignored. For example, “private messaging” on message boards or instant messaging between individuals is understood to be “private” in the sense that it is hidden from public view, but in no way does it mean that the messages are secure or that they will not be monitored by mediating parties. If you send someone obscene messages via “private” message, you can be sure that the administrators of the service have the capability of intercepting and reading them, and in fact in most internet forums this is exactly their responsibility. They usually don’t, but they understand they will be held accountable if something slips under their noses that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

But that is precisely what I meant. Administrators seeing these messages in no way impacts anyone but the administrators themselves. Furthermore, we don’t even know if Swapnote was moderated. Judging by their wording, it sounds like it wasn’t.

So, it is very much a private service in that, if I send something via Swapnote, the only people that will see it are the ones I choose to send it to. No one else (save for the administrators, provided the service was moderated) will see it.

I’m not certain how this is different from any other service. There’s nothing that stops Google or Microsoft or Yahoo from going through someone’s e-mail. That doesn’t mean e-mail isn’t a private service.

hahahaha

Yes and the problem they are clearly showing is the audience in receipt of these pictures. Nintendo doesn’t want to be another vector for dudes to show their dicks to little kids, simple as that.

gold163

I don’t know if we can construe that Nintendo was directly tapping into peoples’ SwapNotes. For one thing I think they wouldn’t have implemented that sort of capability beforehand if they didn’t even see something as simple as exchanging friend codes via third party as a viable method of circumventing whatever safety by obfuscation was in place.

I think it’s more likely that this sort of activity was brought to the attention of Nintendo by concerned users/employees/parents who understand how the services work at least on a basic level.

However, as someone else has pointed out below, you *do* agree to Nintendo ToS which reserve them the capability to monitor the usage of their applications over the internet, such as via SwapNote, and we know for a fact that MiiVerse is actively moderated.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

Dont underestimate the Nintendo Ninjas.

Those girls will cut you

Altin

Degenaration at its finest.

Zero_Destiny

On one hand, the Miiverse pretty much covers most of what Swapnotes did, and while there are still shenanigans, it would prevent offensive photographs and was better monitored. With some minor tweaking Miiverse can be just as good as Swapnotes was. So it has me hopeful that such a draconian take down would mean they’ll finally put Miiverse out on the 3DS to phase out Swapnotes.

On the other hand, such a quick take down with no prior real announcement (at least that I saw) and the lose of one of the main social features (for the moment at least) that was a lot of fun, is pretty distressing and rubs me the wrong way. Also Nikki will be missed.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

Nikki is on Miiverse

s07195

Who’s this Nikki people keep mentioning? I haven’t used Swapnote at all, so I don’t really know.

M’iau M’iaut

The cute mii-like mascot of Swapnote.

s07195

I see… I guess I missed the opportunity to see him/her. >.<

Paul Rodriguez

I actually had a great deal of fun with this. Sucks there are people that ruined this.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

Pokemon and the 2DS led to some real stranger danger with the friend safari. Lol.

This is also 4chan’s fault.

And Kei’s.

Always Kei’s fault.

hazelnut1112

Pretty pissed off. I was about to send a Halloween greeting to my friends and this happens when I was about to send off the note.

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

;/

ShawnOtakuSomething

:/ the feels…

ShawnOtakuSomething

no no no I loved it :( all the epic drawing I hated how people misused it ugh it will be missed * Nikki ><* ……… remake Pictochat to have online or give us 3DS Miiverse

Laer_HeiSeiRyuu

I have all the swapnotes. Would be nice if it was a round 75

Max

I’m sure some american mom found penis images on her son’s 3DS and asked Nintendo to take responsability for her bad parenting.
Whoever took this decision made a huge mistake.

Aaronrules380

Why is this the parent’s fault exactly? It’s not like a parent can monitor and control every little thing there kids do. And yeah, I’m sure it’s totally fine for creepy perverted adults to send pornographic images to children they met on the internet. That’s totally the parent’s fault right there

Armane

They should use the parental controls and turn off features that may cause issues. So yes, they are at fault.

Aaronrules380

I’m pretty sure parental controls can’t just turn off spotpass on one game. A parent might be ok with their kid using the internet to play Mario kart, but not really think about the possibility that they might be exchanging messages with total strangers. And even if they could turn off the one game, they might have no idea their kid is using it with anybody other than their real life friends.

Armane

If you looked at the parental controls, you would see that you can turn off Swapnote. And ignorance is not an excuse.

Aaronrules380

Fair enough about being able to turn it off. But parents still can’t watch their kids 24/7, and they might think their kid only has real life friends on their friends list. Parent’s don’t necessarily know whether or not their kid is adding friend’s from internet forums

Rockman X

Yes they can. It’s called packet snooping.

Max

YES, It’s a parent’s responsibility to know what his kids are doing online.
To receive anything from a stranger on your 3DS you need to EXCHANGE EACH OTHER’S FRIEND CODES ON THE COMPUTER.
And guess what, not only does the 3DS have parental controls, COMPUTERS DO TOO.
We don’t have to pay for crappy parenting of people incompetent enough to not do even the minimum effort to keep their children safe.

Nintendo’s done it. Now no child will ever say or do anything sexual or vulgar ever again!

You’ve solved the problem forever Nintendo!

AuraGuyChris

Way to over exaggerate the move they did.

Aaronrules380

I really don’t think you understand what the issue was in the first place, since I really doubt it was people exchanging penis doodles or things like that, but more likely a bunch of stuff tied to the photo sharing option

AuraGuyChris

Those gosh darned children and their gosh darned drawings of male reproductive organs!

I find this whole issue hilarious, since the last two 3DSes i bought had the parental controlls (not a typo) activated by default. My Xerneas XL had EVERYTHING diabled. I couldn’t even access the network features on X and Y before I went in and disabled parental controls manually.

So I don’t see how its an issue of the parental controls, since those things are a solid annoyance for any non-minor playing a 3DS.

Its an issue with Nintendo actually putting them in place right off the bat and then requiring the user who is playing the 3DS to define a password.

Most kids are smart enough to efficiently use a tablet anymore, so making their own Parental Controls password and withholding it from their parents is child’s play….LITERALLY.

Nexus

or straight up ignore to begin with.

Christopher Nunes

Though I haven’t been using SwapNote for a while now, I love this thing! I enjoy drawing in the Notepads on various popular characters like Pokemon and Digimon and show it to my friends, even with the limited screen to draw on and the ink levels, but this seriously blows. :<

They couldn't have had an alternate solution to it? There's StreetPass on SwapNote, right? Perhaps someone was sending offensive mail intentional and parents saw it and complained to Nintendo?

OK that's highly doubtful (or is it?) but regardless they couldn't just take a different approach to the situation? I will miss Nikki she's was a great and adorable helper on SwapNote.

Aaronrules380

They only disable the spotpass functions. Streetpass still works on it

Christopher Nunes

But that doesn’t really stop the problem much, they people could do the same things still they did on SpotPass and put it in StreetPass.

This is not a perfect solution to the problem.

Aaronrules380

That really isn’t an issue. The issue was that kids added friends who they didn’t know in real life over the internet. It’s not really all that probable that this could occur with someone who lived close enough to streetpass

Christopher Nunes

True about both SpotPass and StreetPass.

It’s sad to see people use such a fun application for such inappropriate manners, but parents need to monitor their kids to make sure they do meet someone… that has a bad influence on their kid.

People nowadays… I just can’t comprehend their behavior most of the time.

DragKudo

NIKKI NOOOOOOOOOO!! YOU WERE MY ONLY FRIEND!!

Khoko

I don’t get game companies these days. I really don’t they want to take and take and take and want us to keep giving and when they cancel something they just do it on a whim and then give us the old soft shoe song and dance routine.

Oh you’ve been using swap note as a way to communicate with friends? Well that sucks it’s gone now because reasons that make no sense as this will happen no matter what. They say they don’t want to be seen as just a children based company then they do this because of children. Lets face it we all know this happened because some parent got butt roasted because their child was sending out noodz and they threatened to sue.

komiko12

Come on, do people really have to use a 3DS for THAT purpose?
There are lots of other ways to do that thing and much easier…

Now Nikki won’t be sending me messages. She has the most artistic swapnotes…

Jettythesunfish

Wow, and I just started getting into it too…

Weeb

I miss my swapnote buddies already.

ChaoofNee

Nintendo suddenly realized press was too good and decided to throw the enthusiast crowd a slap in the face. Good job making my 3DS sad, Nintendo!

Eder García

“Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including MINORS, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote”
“We are very sorry for any inconvenience to the many consumers who have been using this service responsibly; however this decision was made considering the point that many MINORS also use this feature of Swapnote. Thank you for your understanding.”
real talk, this is bad, Nintendo don’t have other choice. please understand.

Nintendo seriously needs to stop with this whole “protect the children” bullshit.
Friend codes are inconvenient enough, when usernames and friend requests would be so much easier…like, I dunno, what PSN and XBox Live do? Instead of having to memorize 10+ digits, give them to a friend, the, give you yours, and then only being visible after both of you add each other.
Those kids they’re trying to “protect” are just getting on Live and calling people slanderous names on CoD, anyway.
I needed to get a 3DS friend’s tumblr or Facebook, and now I have no idea how to ask them for it.
Thanks a lot, Nintendo.

Aaronrules380

Because bad words are equivalent to what could easily have been creepy adults sending images of their genitals to young kids… right

Scipio

There’s this thing called accounts, Nintendo. Could have help tracked down the people doing this in order to ban them, and not punish everyone else.

Just saying.

Espoir

Ugh, this sucks SO BAD :/

Just gotta ask, why use Swapnote? There are TONS of other friggen apps that are better for stuff like that >____>

Crevox

Parental controls bro

Bryce Ward

Anthony you ruined it for all of us :D

Zoozbuh

Why could not they not have just banned/removed the photo feature?! I’m sure people could have lived without that… Banning the ENTIRE service just seems silly, since it’s the only real way to communicate via 3DS!

Aaronrules380

Probably because it’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds to just stop one feature. And would require a software update, which has to be done manually through the eshop, meaning it might not solve the problem. And because shutting down the service is an immediate solution that takes far less time in general

ChiffonCake

Damn, this sucks. Swapnote was a small feature, but one that I was genuinely interested in.

AzureRyuujin

Now how am I gonna keep in touch with my friend who’s on a trip in Thailand? He’s unable to use Skype at present!

XiaomuArisu

Whats next?
Facebook is stopping its service because kids send porn at eachother?
Xbox live closing because minors call eachother names?

TheExile285

“Xbox live closing because minors call eachother names?”

I lol’d

XiaomuArisu

I hope so
….Look 2 likes and 2 dislikes!
A tie!!!

Thatguy

1st time in year, when i launched Swapnote. Day after, swapnote was closed.
The hell?

TheExile285

WTF Nintendo? T_T

sakusakusakura_nyo

I just turned on Swapnote and it seems to be working fine. I got a new note from a friend just yesterday…

It’s because kids today are fucked up and obsessed with getting laid at the ripe old age of 10… seriously. Parents needs to step it up and be parents! Cause it’s not just on the DS. It’s the cell phones and the computers and the iPADS and… wow. Yea. Welcome to the new age?

Kusabi

The saddest part is that this only hurts the people who enjoy it; the people misusing it will just find something else.

Lionxie

Damnit this is why we can’t have nice things.

Aristides

Cant some other company make a IM/chat app for 3Ds?

Brimfyre

Just when I think Nintendo is getting more liberal and will perhaps give us some jiggle boob mechanics for Peach and Zelda, they go and do something like this and prove they are still parenting us.

RisukuAozora

I never liked this method of handling things. It’s like where one person in a classroom acts up and we all take the punishment. I’m sure there were other methods they could’ve done. Just not this one.

It’s too bad nobody’s ever come up with a system wherein we’re all tied to an account and could report other accounts’ misuse so problematic users could be denied certain services or, if appropriate, even be reported to authorities while proper users could continue to enjoy the software and its entire feature set.. Geeze, something that advanced probably won’t exist until, like… 1990s, at least!

E-Mail spamming about this won’t do any good. E-Mail spamming for requesting Nikki to be in the next Smash Bros game, however…

awat

What a shame ,well thers many Disgraceful kids out there cant be helped.

hickorypan

What the honest hell? This was one of my favourite features of the 3DS!

Nintendo, you’ve seriously chosen the worst imaginable way to handle this. Minors are not the only people in the world and they certainly don’t need protecting from things they’re too stupid to avoid or because their parents are too stupid to use the parental lock features.

How the hell are Nintendo games supposed to form any kind of community if people aren’t allowed to communicate? What next, are they going to terminate the Miiverse too? This blows serious chunks.

James LeDuke

Don’t give them ideas!!!!

Ni ~UNREAL BLACK THINGS~

In the future Nintendo will shut down Wii U browser because people is using it to look at adult stuff

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